Facebook Blogging

Edward Hugh has a lively and enjoyable Facebook community where he publishes frequent breaking news economics links and short updates. If you would like to receive these updates on a regular basis and join the debate please invite Edward as a friend by clicking the Facebook link at the top of the right sidebar.

Sunday, October 12, 2003

India and the Second Track

Another of Atanu Dey's ideas relates to the skewed development produced by a highly clustered export driven growth in the context of the enormous agricultural sector which caters for over 700 miliion of India's population. Clearly some strategy which takes this reality into account is essential.

Before the Information Age was the Industrial Age. Policy was then focused on ways to make the transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy. Among the various models (such as export-led growth, import-substitution industrialization, and others) there was one that was called 'agricultural demand led industrialization', or ADLI, which was pioneered by Irma Adelman. ADLI recognized that cost-reducing technological change increased agricultural productivity and thus increased rural incomes. Increased rural incomes provided a demand boost for manufactured goods both for consumption as well as for use in agricultural production. The increased demand for domestically manufactured goods raised wages which in turn were spent on the consumption of agricultural output.

On the labor side of the market, as agricultural productivity increased, labor shifted from the agricultural sector to the manufacturing sector. Thus the industrialization of the population was achieved at pace with the labor transition and was based on increased agricultural productivity attained through the use of appropriate technology. The lesson from the ADLI model is directly relevant to the question of ICT production and use in an LDC's economic growth strategy. The ICT sector is very small compared to the rest of the economy for any LDC. While IT exports will only lead to direct gains only for the IT sector, far more gains can be realized through the use of IT in the non-ICT sector and through the production of IT for domestic consumption. The use of IT in the non-IT sector will increase productivity leading to higher incomes and greater demand for consumption goods which will increase employment, and so on. We can call it the 'Growth from IT Adoption', or the GITA model. One institution that I have worked on which operationalizes the GITA model is 'Rural Infrastructure and Serices Commons' or RISC.
LINK

Now this argument is very interesting, and curiously enough it is very similar to one being used by Mogan Stanley's Daniel Lian, in connection in particular with the rural consumption dimension of what is increasingly being called Thailand's second track development strategy:

The development challenge for resource-rich Southeast Asia, given the rise of China and its growing dominance in mass manufacturing, is the implementation of a balanced development strategy that lessens its dependence on external demand and mass manufacturing driven by foreign direct investment (FDI) from multinational corporations (MNCs). The key to future economic success and survival for Southeast Asia is better leverage of domestic demand and resources to produce 'inner' economic strength, economic winners and pricing power through the growth of local enterprises that thrive on indigenous resources and skills, rather than positioning their economy as tax havens and cheap labor sites for MNCs. The winning Southeast Asian economies are likely to be niche and nimble, with large parts of its economy residing outside the domain of mass manufacturing, as China seems destined to become the global factory.

The second track of the dual-track strategy that we have consistently been advocating over the past three years has two dimensions (see Twin Dimensions of Mr. Thaksin's Dual Track Mode, May 7, 2003). The first dimension concerns policy initiatives aimed at producing a structural lift in domestic demand. This should alter the mix of external and domestic demand in terms of contribution to growth as well as overall output. The second dimension concerns the creation of a 'local enterprise element' consisting of local enterprise and product development alternatives to mass manufacturing for export.

Local enterprises should not only cater to local demand, but their indigenously created and developed products and services should also be used to open new export markets by leveraging the country's unique skills and resources. Unlike the defunct single development track through mass manufacturing, these local products and services would not conform to supply chains controlled by global industrial MNCs, or be tied to the excessively volatile global capex cycle; instead, sources of external demand for these local products and services would be the discerning tastes of global consumers.

The success of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's economic program vividly demonstrates the validity and merits of the second track principles............The Thai rural and SME sectors had been vastly underdeveloped. As at end-2000, about 40% of Thai households engaged in farming and other rural activities but contributed just 10% of GDP. In the past 30 years, there has been little government support for vigorous SME development. At the beginning of Mr. Thaksin's economic regime -- early 2001 -- the government administered a small dose of fiscal medicine, for example, the introduction of the village fund and numerous micro credit programs for SMEs. These were not only aimed at stimulating rural demand through private consumption, but chiefly encouraged the formation of rural businesses and the development of SMEs to structurally ignite the underleveraged rural economy and SME sector.
Source: Morgan Stanley Global Economic Forum
LINK

Emerging Economies

Our Personal Blogs

Claus and Edward's "Baker's Dozen"

Claus Vistesen and Edward Hugh are proud and happy to announce that they are now working as "featured analysts" with a new Boston-based start-up - Emerginvest.

Claus and Edward have used a new, updated, methodology in order to identify a group of 13 emerging economies which we consider are going to outperform both the rest of the emerging economy group and the OECD economies in terms of a number of key performance indicators over the 2008 - 2020 horizon.

Through our association with Emerginvest we hope to develop performance indicators which will confirm both the relevance and validity of the selection procedure adopted.

We would like to point out that we have absolutely no financial connection whatsoever with Emerginvest - although we do heartily endorse what they are trying to do.

In particular we see the move by the investment community towards emerging markets as one of the most effective and direct ways to address those issues of inter-country wealth and income imbalances which have plagued our planet for so long now - namely by getting the money from the rich who have it to the poor who need it.

Sending investment to emerging economies is also a way of addressing the underlying imbalances which exist between the relatively older populations of the developed economies who increasingly need to save, and the relatively younger emerging economies who can benefit from the investment of those savings in their countries. So in a way you can both ensure the future of your own pension and help attack poverty at one and the same time. This type of possibility is normally known in economics as "win-win".

The oldest known source and most probable origin for the expression "baker's dozen" dates to the 13th century in one of the earliest English statutes, instituted during the reign of Henry III (r. 1216-1272), called the Assize of Bread and Ale. Bakers who were found to have shortchanged customers could be liable to severe punishment. To guard against the punishment of losing a hand to an axe, a baker would give 13 for the price of 12, to be certain of not being known as a cheat. Specifically, the practice of baking 13 items for an intended dozen was to prevent "short measure", on the basis that one of the 13 could be lost, eaten, burnt or ruined in some way, leaving the baker with the original dozen.

Special Mention

Economy Watch

About Claus

Claus Vistesen is a 23 year old macroeconomist who is on the point of finishing his MSc in Applied Economics and Finance from the Copenhagen Business School. His primary research interests are international finance and international macroeconomics. Claus is especially interested in how the changing structure of global and national demographics impacts on local macroeconomic performance. Moreover - and as the wonk he ultimately is - he also takes a considerable interest issues and methodologies associated with econometrics, and this is an interest he intends to develop in his postgraduate research.

About Edward

Edward 'the bonobo' is a Catalan macroeconomist and economic demographer of British extraction, now based in Barcelona. By inclination he is a macroeconomist, but his deep-seated obsession with trying to understand the economic impact of contemporary demographic changes has often taken him far from home, off and away from the more tranquil and placid pastures of the dismal science, into the bracken and thicket of demography, anthropology, biology, sociology and systems theory. All of which has lead him to ask himself whether Thomas Wolfe was not in fact right when he asserted that the fact of the matter is "you can never go home again".

He is currently working on a book with the provisional working title "Population, the Ultimate Non-renewable Resource".